'Systemic' issues at the DWP inflicted avoidable stress on carers, report finds

Ministers are facing calls to apologise and pay compensation to hundreds of thousands of unpaid carers after a damning review of the benefits system revealed some considered suicide to escape their debts.

- Patrick Butler Josh Halliday

A report ordered by the government on the longstanding failures within the carers allowance found the Department for Work and Pensions inflicted avoidable hardship and distress on carers and led to hundreds of millions of pounds of taxpayers’ money being misused.

The investigation said fault lay with “systemic” issues at the DWP and said carers should not be blamed for falling foul of what it said were complex and confusing benefit rules.

Unpaid carers who look after loved ones for at least 35 hours a week are entitled to an £83.30 a week carer’s allowance, as long as their weekly earnings from part-time jobs do not exceed £196.

But if they exceed this limit, even by as little as 1p, they must repay that entire week’s allowance.

Under the “cliff edge” earnings rules, this means someone who oversteps the threshold by 1p a week for a year must repay not 52p but £4,331.60, plus a £50 civil penalty.

Liz Sayce, a disability rights expert and the author of the review, called the DWP’s handling of the carer’s allowance a “longstanding injustice” and said the scale of the problem, and the repeated failure to heed warnings or fix issues, was “entirely unacceptable.”

DWP statistics published by the review show that 180,000 carers ran up overpayment debts of £300m between 2019 and 2025, despite promises to fix the system. “The DWP has failed to act systematically ... and take actions that could have stemmed these overpayments,” the review concluded.